While the NHL remains locked out, the future of hockey marches on, and in a positive direction.

The Ontario Hockey League is implementing a policy to suspend players who engage in 10 or more fights, and the United States Hockey League announced a pilot project, in consultation with the NHL, to discipline players who accumulate multiple penalties for “dangerous play,” including elbowing, head contact, and kneeing.

These developments, from the grass-roots level where future NHL players build their skills, come as excellent news in light of Wednesday’s premiere of "Head Games" at the Boston Film Festival. The movie, which will be available on iTunes and various on-demand providers, as well as in select theaters, shows the devastating effects of concussions, looking at both the struggles of the athletes who suffered brain injuries in their professional careers, and the kids who are playing games today.

"Head Games" was directed and produced by Steve James, the man behind Hoop Dreams. It was inspired by the 2006 book of the same name, written by former Harvard football player and WWE wrestler Christopher Nowinski, the co-founder of the Sports Legacy Institute along with Dr. Robert Cantu, a concussion expert at Boston University. Both men are featured prominently throughout the film.

“It goes well beyond what the book has because the book was written in 2006,” Nowinski told Sporting News. “We’ve learned so much in the last few years.”

One thing that has been learned, and that perhaps should have been evident before, is that chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease that Cantu studies but can only diagnose posthumously, is not a disease limited to football players. The full title of Nowinski’s book was "Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis," but the film, while primarily focusing on football, features a wide variety of sports, including hockey.

“This isn’t just about doom and gloom in the long term,” Nowinski said. “This is about getting information to make the change to their behaviors, while they’re playing, to extend their careers and their lives. Players need to know that—you look at the Sidney Crosby situation, and think about that the first hit to the head he got (in the 2011 Winter Classic) was not taken seriously. The second one, four days later, he took a year off. You really appreciate that the first hit needed a week or two off. That’s the obvious medicine, is not to play with it.”

Crosby may wind up being fine in the long term, but there will always be the danger that the next hit to the head he takes could be his last. That is a danger for all hockey players, of course, but it is heightened by a history of concussions. Keith Primeau, the two-time NHL All-Star who was forced to retire in 2005 after his fourth documented concussion, knows this all too well.

Primeau, who is now responsible for the website stopconcussions.com and recently released a book, "Concussed! Sports-related Head Injuries: Prevention, Coping and Real Stories," told Sporting News that his last concussion “probably wasn’t” his worst, “but at that point, it didn’t take much.”

Primeau is in "Head Games," both talking about his own battles and coaching his son, Chayse, in a youth hockey league outside Philadelphia. Chayse already is part of the story, having suffered his first concussion in 2010. In the movie, Chayse, now 15, says that he’d rather not think about the issue.

“Part of the dilemma is that kids don’t care to know, or just don’t understand, but oddly enough, it’s not just the kids,” Keith Primeau said. “Sometimes, it’s the parents that don’t want to know. We’ve set up booths before at hockey tournaments, and the kids stop to get the information, but the parents quickly scurry them along so they don’t find out the information. That’s something we need to overcome. It’s not something to fear, but something to be understood. Chayse, I think, he just didn’t know about it and he didn’t have to fear it.”

Primeau said that his 17-year-old daughter is more acutely aware of the issue, but that he doesn’t talk about it much at home “because there’s no reason for them to concern themselves.” That’s quite different from the reason that professional sports leagues, including the NHL, have been reluctant to get involved, but the tide is turning, and that is clear from the interviews in "Head Games," including one with Dr. Ruben Echemendia, the head of the NHL/NHLPA Concussion Working Group.

“I don’t feel that the NHL is in the same state of denial that the NFL once was,” Nowinski said. “I don’t feel that. They’re very aggressive in terms of prevention and changing the current game, which I respect. I think Brendan Shanahan has done a wonderful job. I will say that they haven’t embraced the CTE work as much as perhaps I would like, but I think they’re coming around. We’ve started a dialogue. Dr. Echemendia and I have spoken, and we’re not that far apart. It’s the nuances that are being discussed.

“I would like to see the NHL be more involved in CTE research. The NFL and NFL Players Association have done research a huge favor by encouraging players to participate, and funding a lot of programs. We’re going to need to solve this all together, so I hope the NHL gets more involved on that side.”

“Do you know everything that went on in their lives?” Bettman said, a veiled reference to Boogaard’s death from a toxic combination of painkillers and alcohol, and to Probert’s struggles with drugs. “Were there other things going on which could also cause CTE? I’m not suggesting there were or there weren’t, but the data is not sufficient to draw a conclusion, and our experts tell us the same thing. We don’t have proof to make that assertion or conclusion.”

While Bettman was right about science not yet having all the answers to CTE, the fact remained that Boogaard was a hockey player who engaged in a lot of fights and wound up diagnosed with a degenerative disease after dying at an early age.

“The fighting issue in hockey has taken attention away from the fact that CTE is a risk for anybody who’s played contact sports, and you have some talented people (such as Martin) who weren’t known for their fighting skills,” Nowinski said. “You have to remember that fighting is a very small and unique population, and it’s going to carry the highest risk, relative to other positions and relative to the sport. But if you take all the NHL players who retired from concussions, and there’s a lot, most of them weren’t known for their fighting. I worry about those guys.

“The scary thing about Derek Boogaard is not the manner of death. The scary thing is that at the age of 28, he had this brain disease, and his future was probably not bright. It could have affected every decision he made. It shouldn’t be normal to have brain injuries in sport, and we have to appreciate how destructive this disease is.”